Software Engineer (Mid Level)
Job Description
We're making Africa the first cashless continent.
In 2017, over half the population in Sub-Saharan Africa had no bank account. That's for good reason—the fees are too high, the closest branch can be miles away, and nobody takes cards. Without access to financial institutions, people are forced to keep their savings under the mattress. Small business owners rely on lenders who charge extortionate rates. Parents spend hours waiting in line to pay school fees in cash.
We're solving this by building financial services that just work: no account fees, instantly available, and accepted everywhere. In places where electricity, water and roads don't always work, you can still send money with Wave. In 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments. Now, we have millions of users across six countries and are growing fast.
Our goal is to make Africa the first cashless continent and that's where you come in.....
To complement our team's skill set, we're seeking a full-stack engineer with experience in front-end web development using React. The ideal candidate should be comfortable working on the backend but strongly prefer web-frontend development. We’re looking for someone with a solid understanding of the various components of web frontend development, familiarity with available tools and design patterns, and the ability to independently implement significant improvements, such as introducing a new testing framework.
Our to-do list is always evolving, but here are some recent projects:
- Improving the web application interface used by the customer support team to make it easier to identify and resolve a customer problem and provide better visibility into causes of support and their resolutions.
- Building feature flags for our support frontend to smoothly roll out new features and improvements.
- Optimizing performance of our web frontend during periods of flaky internet or low bandwidth.
- Enabling our customer service team to be matched with customers who are mostly likely to resolve their support request, taking into account language, account attributes, and call history.
- Enabling self-service support through an automated messaging experience (chatbot) on WhatsApp.
- You can work remotely from anywhere (between UTC -5 and +4) with reliable internet access.
- You’re willing to travel to one of our key markets once per year for ~6 days (Wave covers all costs). We also provide a yearly stipend of $800 to meet with coworkers.
- Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your level, we offer a salary of up to $144,000 (paid in your local currency equivalent), plus a generous equity package.
- We run performance reviews twice a year and award bonuses or promotions to strong performers who have been with the company for more than six months.
- Major benefits:
- Subsidized health insurance for you and your dependents and retirement contributions (both vary from country to country).
- 6 months of fully paid parental leave and subsidized fertility assistance.
- Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 30-40 days per year.
- $10,000 annual charitable donation matching.
- Minimum of 5 years of professional experience as a software engineer.
- Experience working with web frontends using React.
- Fluent in English.
- Fluency speaking French
- Reflexively ask yourself, “is this code the best way to make my users happy?”
- You lean towards frontend web work but like working across the stack.
- Aren’t afraid to experiment, and don’t hesitate to change directions when you discover new information.
- Want to learn to solve complex problems and aren’t afraid to ask for help when you get stuck.
- Can communicate clearly with colleagues who work, speak, and think differently.
- Work to make things easier for the next engineer who will touch your code.
- Always try to improve as a programmer and colleague.
- Are excited to deeply understand the inner workings of the tools you use.
- You'll join an autonomous, cross-functional, and diverse team focused on a single area of Wave's product. Each team is led by a Product Manager and an Engineering Manager.
- We organize projects to give you as much ownership as possible. Typically, you'll be responsible for a feature or improvement end-to-end, from design through deployment.
- Our stack (note that we will train you on any of these—you don't need any prior experience):
- backend: Python 3 (+ mypy)
- API layer: GraphQL
- android frontend: Kotlin/Jetpack
- iOS frontend: Swift/SwiftUI
- web frontend: TypeScript/React
- database: Postgres
- infrastructure: GCP / Terraform
- orchestration: Kubernetes
- We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, and Uganda, plus remote team members spread across the world.
- We're deeply passionate about our mission of bringing radically affordable financial services to the people who need them most.
- We foster autonomy for our employees. You'll own your projects at every stage, from understanding the problem to monitoring your solution in production.
- We raised the largest Series A in Africa in 2021. Our world-class investors, include Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, and Partech Africa.
- In 2023, we were on Y Combinator's top 50 companies by revenue.
Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English and a cover letter describing your interest in Wave and the role.
We review applications frequently and recommend that you apply to the role that most closely aligns with your skills, experience and career goals.
Wave is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
Please note that Wave is not actively hiring in the U.S. at this time. Therefore, applications submitted by U.S.-based applicants will not be reviewed by our Talent team. We encourage all U.S.-based applicants to keep an eye on our Careers page for updates, as we will provide notifications once we resume hiring in the U.S.
Salary & Benefits
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